


Cirrus

by scarrletmoon



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Awkward Dates, Break Up, Love Confessions, M/M, Nostalgia, Post-Break Up, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 01:19:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5724115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarrletmoon/pseuds/scarrletmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sawamura and Sugawara broke up after high school and never expected to see each other again: especially not when they were out on dates with different people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cirrus

**Author's Note:**

> i was just sitting around, minding my own business when my brain came up with this idea
> 
> my brain was like
> 
> "hey, you know what would be a great idea"
> 
> i'm like, what
> 
> "if suga ran into daichi after they broke up at the end of high school and it looked like daichi had moved on just fine without him even though suga was still kind of majorly in love with him" 
> 
> and i thought 
> 
> wow
> 
> that's awful 
> 
> imma write it
> 
> so i did

The day was a little cold, but the snow was still a long way off and the wind was gentle. 

The moment Koushi walked through the door, his heart stopped like every artery in his body had suddenly turned to stone and his heart was gasping for air. 

It felt like horror and hope all at once and on a day like today, it seemed to make sense as much as it didn't. 

He didn't realise that he'd been floating away in his own thoughts until he felt a hand on his arm, heard a voice that pulled him back. 

“Sugawara?” 

He startled, looked down at this girl who he suddenly felt bad for because he knew now that his heart wasn't in this date anymore. She was very pretty, very witty and held a conversation like it was no trouble at all. Her name was Yuki, after her late grandmother, she’d told him in the library. It had been a crisp, October evening. The sun was beginning to set when they both reached for the same book on opposite sides of the same shelf. There had been a brief, confusing tug of war before Koushi had let the book slide out of his fingers and a pair of light brown eyes appeared in the space where it had been. They'd laughed about it, talked for awhile and at some point, Yuki had suggested dinner. She was nice, he'd thought. Charismatic and passionate. She was studying biology but had an eye on graphic design and wasn't sure.

But she wasn't the man sitting in the booth ahead of them, someone she didn't recognise but who Koushi knew all too well. 

And too late, before Koushi could come up with an excuse to get dinner somewhere else, explain that he'd made a mistake or even that they should go do something more interesting, the man looked up, met his eyes, and the easy smile that had been on his face melted away. 

Koushi grimaced and snapped his gaze away, turning to Yuki with his best embarrassed smile. He started to say that he'd changed his mind about the restaurant after all, but he never got the chance to finish. The man was saying something too quietly for Koushi to hear but he could see the words his lips formed.

“Sugawara.”

He froze and Yuki looked a little panicked. 

“I'm sure this date can't be worse than any of the others I've been on,” she’d teased earlier. Koushi was starting to think that maybe she'd been wrong. 

She glanced at the man in the booth (who was starting to get up) and then at Koushi’s stricken face. “Do you know him?” she asked, low enough so only Koushi could hear. “Should we leave?” 

She was concerned for him and it made Koushi feel worse. 

It was too late anyway; the man was already there, a little dazed, one hand hesitantly reaching towards Koushi. Whether he was aiming for Koushi’s shoulder or hand, wasn't certain; right then, he didn't seem certain of anything. Neither of them were speaking. Everyone was staring. There was no one desperately trying to get in or out of the building, but they were blocking the doorway. 

“Hi,” the man said, lamely and a little breathlessly. He looked surprised that any sound had come out of his mouth at all. 

“Hi,” Koushi replied. He couldn't bring himself to look right at the man's face. He managed a vague glance upwards and then dropped his gaze. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Yuki frown. 

She coughed then, very tactfully, as if she were only clearing her throat and not directing attention away from Koushi. 

The man smiled uneasily, reluctantly shifting his attention. “A friend?” 

“Date, actually,” she said, and although she smiled, it was cold. 

“I'm sorry,” he said hastily, holding out his hand, palm open and steady. “I'm Sawamura. Daichi. Sugawara and I were...friends, a while back. In high school..”

Yuki's smile was still cold when she took his hand and shook it, twice. When she turned back to Koushi, her expression was speculative. 

“Why don't I leave you two to catch up?” she said slowly, as if she was waiting for one of them to protest. That was probably the point. But Koushi’s heartbeat stopped and then tripled. “I have to use the bathroom anyway.” 

Koushi couldn't tell if he was happy about this or panicking. Either way, somehow he'd forgotten how to pull air into his lungs. 

“It's been a while,” Sawamura said softly after she'd left. It wasn't an understatement, but it wasn't quite right either. “We should sit down.” He looked back over his shoulder and seemed to remember that he'd had someone with him too. He at least had the decency to look guilty, but it wasn't the right kind of guilt. Something wasn't right but Koushi couldn't tell what it was. 

“You can meet Jessica,” he said. He pronounced the foreign name far more easily than he'd ever pronounced anything foreign when Koushi had known him. “She's teaching English in a local high school.” 

Koushi’s stomach clenched but he still followed Sawamura back to his booth, willing his legs to keep working even though all they wanted to do was collapse in on themselves and rest for a month or two. He felt more tired now than he had been in months. 

The woman in the booth had cropped blond hair and eyes that reminded Koushi of the sea in winter. He felt a pang of jealousy. 

“Hello,” he said, and tried not to grimace at the way his accent sounded next to hers. To his relief, she answered him in almost perfect Japanese. 

“You’re a friend of...Sawamura’s?” She had a very warm smile , he noticed. Her ‘r’s were a little too sharp but she sounded almost local when she spoke. 

“From high school,” he said. He was still standing at the table, and her gaze made him self-conscious. He didn't know where to put his hands. “I don't want to interrupt-”

“Oh no!” she laughed. “This wasn't anything formal, please sit down.” Her enthusiasm was a little overwhelming and Koushi felt blinded as he gingerly sat next to Sawamura, putting too much space between them. 

“Are you a student?” she asked. Her smile was too bright. Koushi still hadn't gotten his thoughts on order. Yuki would be out of the bathroom soon and he had too many questions, none of which were for the woman in front of him. 

“Yes, I am,” he said, defaulting to over-formality. There was a pause, and he realised a second too late that she was waiting for him to add which school he went to, or his major or literally anything else that could carry a conversation. 

“Me too,” she said, unfazed. She crinkled her nose and Koushi would have thought it was cute if he hadn't felt Sawamura relax reflectively when she did. Koushi could feel his warmth towards her and it made him feel sick. “How’s my Japanese?” 

“Perfect,” Koushi said, because he didn't have the heart in him to lie. “I almost can't tell you're-” Wouldn't it be rude to point out that she was foreign and he found it a little strange that she spoke so well? He didn't want to be rude. It wasn't her fault that Koushi couldn't let his hopeless high school feelings die. 

“I'm glad. I studied before I came but I'm learning from my students. I'm teaching-”

“English,” Koushi finished for her. He started to apologise for cutting her off but she waved it aside. 

“Part-time. It's a lot of fun. At first they kept telling me that I sounded like I'd eaten the textbook,” she laughed, and Sawamura joined in like he'd heard the story before. He probably had. His eyes probably hadn’t left her face since they'd sat down and they were relaxed around each other in such a way that only came after months or years of friendship. Or maybe something else. 

He didn't think they meant to exclude him but they kept talking without him, eventually slipping unthinkingly into English. Koushi understood but it took more effort than he was willing to expend, so he took the chance to detach himself from the conversation and regather his thoughts. 

Koushi had not seen Sawamura Daichi for four years. It had started on the day after graduation, and if he was perfectly honest with himself (as he always tried to be), Koushi had been expecting it. They both had. And yet they'd taken that walk together, through the neighborhood they shared, past Coach Ukai’s shop and down the slope towards the coast. They’d held hands and talked easily about things that didn't really matter - about the team and how much it had grown; about how all those entrance exams felt like distant dreams now that they were over; casual thoughts about what living so far away from home would be like. 

Koushi hadn't been able to shake the feeling of impending doom all the way down to the cluster of rocks and pebbles that tapered off into the small,sandy space that disappeared at high tide; their tiny sand spit that they jokingly called a beach.

It had been midday and the sun was unusually hot. A handful of light, wispy clouds stretched across the sky, too sparse to block the sun's light. The wind was gentle. 

It was a beautiful, quiet day. 

“I love you,” Koushi had wanted to say, but he’d looked at Daichi’s face and known that he couldn't. 

Someone was tapping his shoulder, he realised. There was a face in front of him. Someone was speaking to him in Japanese. 

“Sugawara, I'm so sorry,” Yuki said. She seemed genuinely apologetic. Her knuckles were white around the cell phone in her hand. “Something came up.” 

“I'll walk you back,” he offered. Anything to get out of here. 

“You don't have to,” she insisted, but Koushi was already standing up. He  hadn't remembered taking off his coat, but he shrugged it back on. 

“It's fine.” He made an effort this time to smile like he meant it, to reassure her. “It was nice to meet you,” he said, offering his hand to Jessica. She shook it, which was nice of her considering their conversation had been short and bad. 

For the first time that night, Koushi met Sawamura’s eyes. 

“Goodbye,” he said, and the finality felt like daggers in his ears. 

Sawamura didn't say anything. 

To her credit, Yuki didn't ask what the hell that had been about, but she probably had her own ideas and was trying to be sensitive. He’d lost count now of how many times she'd been kinder than  she'd had to be, and again he hoped that one day she'd go on a date that didn't end terribly. 

“Sugawara.” 

He looked up and found that he'd kept walking without her. He looked at her face a saw that she understood, and part of him hated how that expression came so easily to her. It was the kind of sad empathy that came after realising she'd been rejected, again.

“I can keep going on my own from here. And you have things you need to think about.” 

He didn't respond because he knew she was right. 

As he turned to leave, she stopped him again a few paces away, cupping her hands around her mouth and calling his name so he could hear over the light evening crowd.

“Check your pockets!” 

She disappeared then, swallowed by the crowd as she set off again. 

At some point, Koushi realised, it had started to snow. 

* * *

 

It hadn't been a terrible day, but it hadn't been good either. 

He'd woken up just in time for class but not in time to squeeze in breakfast beforehand. He sat through a three hour lecture, distracted, vaguely annoyed and hungry. After half an hour he realised that he couldn’t take notes and not think about the other night at the same time. After an hour of trying to write his notes by hand instead of typing, he remembered why he always left this class with a cramp in his hand and less than half of the information. After an hour and a half, he was reduced to anxious doodling in the margins. In two hours, he’d stopped paying attention entirely and was starting to get annoyed glares from people who’re getting sick of watching him fidget. After two hours and ten minutes, with his chest feeling like it was going to burst and his pores could start seeping blood any minute, he stuffed his things into his bag and left. No one paid him much attention other than to sigh in relief. His restlessness had been irritating. 

Now that was free fifty minutes earlier than he’d expected, he didn’t really know what to do with himself. He’d spent the night getting two hours of sleep at a time and whenever he’d turned over to go back to sleep, it was with a stomach roiling with a weird mixture of hopeful dread. The problem now was that he’d had a lot of stress happen all at once and hadn’t had the chance to sleep to work it out and now he was exhausted but still couldn’t sleep and could feel tears prickling behind his eyes because he was confused, frustrated and just wanted something to make <i> _ sense _ . 

He’d been walking aimlessly down hallways while he’d been thinking himself into circles, and he forced himself to stop, press the heels of his hands into his eyes to coax the tears back into his head or something, and leaned back against a wall for support. Leaning turned into sliding and before long he was sitting on the floor, but it was fine; he didn’t know where he’d wandered off to but there was no one in the hallway and therefore no one to disturb him.

He focused on breathing as he curled up with his forehead pressed against his knees and his coat balled up against his chest, trying to force every last anxious thought of his head because he hated, <i> _ hated  _ crying when he knew his problems were always minor, but eventually he had to give in because sooner or later, he'd end up crying. The hallway was quiet so he tried to keep his pathetic gasping to a minimum. If anyone found him like this, he’d never be able to look them in the eye again. 

The worst part was that he wasn’t entirely sure  _ why _ he was crying. Maybe this was all the frustration and anger and helplessness he’d felt those four years ago. Maybe this was him finally realising whatever had happened then was done. Maybe this was him letting go after trying to pretend for so long that he’d never been in love in the first place. Or maybe it was all of them at once, and each new possibility left him digging his nails into his jeans, gasping for air where there was none, hurting so deeply that felt like his flesh was peeling away from his bones, but the pain was still there, like a glowing iron in his chest. He grasped helplessly at his ribs, but there was no way to claw it out even though it felt like if he just scratched long and hard enough, he could carve it out of his heart. 

It was times like these when he wondered what the point of staying alive was - not because he wanted to die, but because this kind of pain left him so hopeless that he felt he'd rather be like a ghost, drifting emotionlessly through space. He knew that if he just suffered through it, just cried enough, just waited long enough, he’d pull through with a scar that made him stronger than before. He’d done it before. But finding the patience, especially now when it felt like he’d always have to carry it like a lead chain hooked to his chest, was so hard. He’d never wanted to give up so badly before and it terrified him. 

Eventually, still gasping and raw, he lifted his head and tilted his face up to the ceiling, breathing fresh air through his mouth because his nose was a mess. He dug around blindly in his coat pockets for a stray tissue, checking the left and right, and almost giving up until he poked a finger in the forgotten inside pocket and pulled out a wad of tissues and a card. 

The card fluttered to the ground and it was only after he’d wiped his nose (blowing what felt like eighty percent of all the liquid in his body out through one nostril alone) that he noticed it lying beside him on the ground. He picked it up to see if it was worth keeping or if it was another business card from that kid on campus who still gave them away in the hopes that his startup would <i> _ really _ take off this semester (if anything, he was keeping the recycling boxes full which was nice of him). But it wasn’t exactly what he was expecting. 

It still amazed him that he could remember completely arbitrary things, like the fact that Venus was the hottest planet in the solar system and not Mercury, or that slugs have four noses and non-dairy creamer is flammable, or perhaps even the number of his ex-boyfriend from high school when it was scrawled on the back of a faded business card. 

This card hadn’t been there before and Koushi knew that, but no matter how much he strained his memory, he couldn’t remember it being handed to him. He’d deleted that number a long time ago, even changed his own number and upgraded his phone a few times. 

Koushi started at the number and tried to will himself to put it back in his pocket or tear it up and forget about it, or stuff it into the bottom of his bag where it was guaranteed to get destroyed. He thought about how much it would hurt to hear another apology, to hear the voice of someone he cared so much about but who couldn’t still care about him, to know that they’d moved on just fine without him. 

So he ripped up the card, clawed his phone out of the pocket of his jeans and dialed the number from memory. 

After the first ring, Koushi told himself that he’d hang up before the call went to voicemail. After the second, his thumb hovered over the ‘cancel’ button. After the third, he held his breath, squeezed his eyes shut and grit his teeth against the wave of disappointment he could feel bubbling up in his chest. The fourth ring came and he knew he was being stupid. He steeled himself, pulled the phone away from his ear before the fifth ring and hung just a nanosecond before he heard a voice say “Koushi?” through his phone speaker. 

Koushi gasped, mostly because he didn’t have any voice left to yell at his own stupidity and bad luck, but he hardly had the time to debate the merits of calling again versus shoving his phone back into his pocket and never thinking about the incident again, because his phone lit up a second later with a call from the number he’d just hung up on.

Koushi mashed his phone to his ear and whispered because that was all that was left of his voice. 

“Daichi?”

Koushi felt something inside him unravel when Daichi sighed in relief, as if the knot of pain in his chest had loosened a little just by hearing that voice. Maybe it helped that he used Daichi’s first name. He’d carefully avoided saying it until now. 

“Where are you?” Daichi asked. He sounded a lot calmer than he had been when they’d run into other yesterday, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. 

Koushi started to tell him but hesitated - was now the right time to meet after the awkward mess yesterday had been? Before then, the last they had seen or heard from each other had been that late summer afternoon. Koushi had stared out at the sea and hated how beautiful the day looked on such a painful day. Daichi hadn’t taken his eyes off Koushi’s face until they had unclasped their hands and said goodbye, before college and the distance said it for them.

Koushi always kissed him goodbye. He hadn’t that day, and he still regretted it. 

Koushi told him where he was.

“An hour. Wait for me,” was all he said, and then he hung up before Koushi could convince him that it was a bad idea, that they should have left what they had behind on that terribly picturesque day with its scattering of cirrus clouds. There had been no rain that day, nor the day after. There hadn’t been any phone calls either, and it had taken a week for Koushi to stop waiting for one. Somehow, it had never occurred to him to call first - he’d always assumed that Daichi would have wanted it that way. 

Slowly, Koushi unravled himself, wincing as his muscles cramped. Every part of him ached but his head finally felt clear and he could live with that. He gingerly put on his coat, picked up his bag and with the help of a few signs, figured out where he was and managed to find a bathroom. He splashed water on his face, saw that he still looked like he’d been punched in the eyes and decided to pull his hood up before he went outside. 

His feet room him to the library. From the third floor, he could see miles around, but he could also see the quad, which was more important. He found his headphones curled up in the bottom of his bag. He meticulously worked the knots out of them, picked a song, and waited. 

He people-watched for a long time or not long at all. It was hard to tell time when he was like this. He saw a few people he recognised - the girl from the history class he took last semester who dyed her hair a different colour every week. The boy in that drawing class who dressed impeccably aside from his old, battered shoes. Two of his many terrible roommates (the one who’d had his girlfriend over so many times without warning that Koushi ended up crashing in a friend’s room for three weeks, and the one who was so intensely racist and xenophobic that it made Koushi’s skin crawl). There was Asano, the girl he’d briefly dated, and Kindaichi who he’d less briefly but far more disastrously dated. Thinking about people he’d dated made him feel a little ill so he switched to just observing, picking out people whose hairstyles he’d like to try some day or clothes he wished he could buy. There was one person in particular who had a hat that Koushi thought looked vaguely familiar although he couldn’t figure out why. Just as they were taking a phone call, his phone rang.

“I’m here,” Daichi said, before Koushi could say hello. 

On the ground, the person with the hat held their phone to their ear. They were looking for something, or someone. 

“I see you,” Koushi said softly. And then, “You kept it.” 

“Kept what?” Daichi was still looking for him, peering over the after-class crowds filling the quad.

“The dumb hat I gave you when the team did that secret gift exchange,” Koushi reminded him. It had been right before they started dating and he’d just conveniently taken up crochet. It was probably a little obvious after Daichi had unwrapped it in front of everyone, but it had still taken them a week. 

“It is not dumb,” Daichi scoffed, offended, and Koushi grinned for the first time in days. “It’s been keeping all the heat from escaping through the top of my head.”

“You lose heat through every part of your body almost as much as your head.” He was close to laughing and the rate that his emotions were changing was making him dizzy. 

“I knew that.” He didn’t know that. 

“It almost blew away one day,” Koushi reminded him even though he knew that Daichi couldn’t forget, not now. “I’d never seen you climb a tree so fast before.” There was a crowd near the library doors and Koushi pushed through it. At least one person angrily called out to him to not being fucking rude but he didn’t care. 

“It was important,” Daichi said simply. “It still is.”

Koushi bit his lip. He had a few more steps to go and then he’d be right in Daichi’s line of sight, and he didn’t want to be seen crying, not on a day like this. 

“I think,” Daichi continued, and Koushi knew he’d been seen because his voice became so much softer. “I think it’s raining.” 

“Did you bring an umbrella?” Koushi asked. He could see Daichi’s lips moving but couldn’t hear him quite yet. 

“No.” 

“You didn’t think this through.”

“I didn't.”

Koushi could barely breathe. Through the earpiece, he heard Daichi’s voice echo. 

“That was less than an hour,” Koushi said.

He’d never seen Daichi’s eyes this intense before. No, that was a lie - this was the kind of intensity he reserved for matches, serious games that he was determined to win no matter what it took. There was a promise in the set of his shoulders and the spark in his eyes, but a softness between his eyebrows and in the curve of his lips. 

“I ran,” he answered. 

Koushi didn’t know if he took the first step or if Daichi did, but it didn’t matter; a second later they were kissing so hard it hurt and he almost cut his lip on Daichi’s teeth but it didn’t matter; he was gripping Daichi’s jacket so hard that his fingers throbbed but it didn’t matter; he could feel the rain on his face but that didn’t matter either; people were probably staring and annoyed but that definitely didn’t matter; but what did were Daichi’s hands on either side of his face, the urgency of his kisses, each more hungry than the last as if he’d been starved of this for the past four years and definitely as if he didn’t care who was watching. They pressed their bodies together as the rain fell harder, kissing as if they'd never get to again, until they could taste rainwater on each other’s lips but still not stopping- at least not until the rain suddenly disappeared from over their heads. 

Koushi was very reluctant to let go long enough to see why the rain had stopped, but when he did, he found that it hadn’t; someone was holding an umbrella over them.

“Yuki.”

From under the hood of her bright yellow raincoat, she smirked. “I see you checked your pockets.”

Koushi blinked, got more water in his eyes and unsuccessfully tried to wipe it away with his soaked sleeve. 

Yuki tilted the handle of her umbrella out to him. “Give it back to me when you see me,” she said, pushing it into his hand. “You owe me.”

There were a lot of things he wanted to say, to begin to apologise, but they didn’t seem like enough and he didn’t have time. So he settled with, “I do.”

With a satisfied nod, Yuki walked on, shoving her hands into her pockets and ducking her head against the rain. 

Koushi peered through the clear umbrella at the sky as Daichi placed a single, careful kiss on his jaw. The sky was dark, the sun obscured by dark, heavy clouds. 

“I love you,” Daichi murmured. 

The wind was gentle this time too. 

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in like 2 hours on my pHONE which boggles my mind because i haven't written anything this long and spontaneous in years, i'm so proud 
> 
> what made yuki leave that date??  
> let's just say she had a complicated lil sumin' sumin' in the love department, ya feel 
> 
> (i'm so embarrassing, im so, i'm so sorry)


End file.
